Vince Cable – Magician. Gymnast. Hard Man
Tuesday saw the release of the much anticipated Browne Review into higher education. Although much of the reviews findings had already been leaked in the build up to its release, the findings will still come as a shock to those students that will be affected.
The report proposes lifting the current cap on tuition fees from £3,000 to a soft cap of £7,000, allowing universities to charge any amount that they wish but receiving less and less money the further they go over the cap.
It was left to Vince Cable, Lib Dem MP and Business Secretary, to announce that he agreed with the “main thrust” of the report, thereby performing an astonishing U-turn. Cable, along with every member of the Liberal Democratic Party signed a National Union of Students pledge opposing any increase in tuition fees. Trying to justify the dramatic change in policy the Business Secretary stated that “the roads to Westminster are littered with the skidmarks of the political parties changing direction on this issue.”
This issue could prove to be highly damaging for the party as the Liberal Democrats have consistently campaigned against tuition fees and have gained significant amounts of supports from students because of this. Although the Lib Dem leadership appear to have accepted the case for raising tuition fees the final outcome has not yet been settled yet and concessions will no doubt be sought.
Vince Cable was again the star of the show on Wednesday as he put forward the postal services bill for the first time. This bill, if approved, would radically alter the nature Royal Mail. The main proposals of the bill is to turn the Royal Mail into a mutual company; a type of co-operative, where the staff would own at least 10% of the shares. Cable has described this as the UK’s largest ever share ownership scheme.
The remaining shares could end up in the hands of a private company such as TNT, the Dutch logistics company. In this event a wave of industrial actions, led by the CWU (Communication Workers Union), would be almost inevitable as the threat of a large number of layoffs would become a reality. Cable and the coalition government have stated actively stop a programme of mass redundancies or interfere in any industrial disputes.
Privatisation may appear a convenient escape for the government – the Royal Mail has a black hole in its pension pots which is in the billions of pounds – but the institution, much like the BBC, has a place in the nation’s heart which means that pushing through privatisation could be a fraught process.
Solid Debut
Wednesday saw the first appearance at PMQ’s for Ed Miliband, the newly elected leader of the Labour Party. Sticking to questions on child benefit the consensus seems to have been that Ed produced a surprisingly capable display which had Cameron on the back foot. The next big confrontation between the two, at the dispatch box will be on October 20th when the spending review, the extensive government audit which will outline the scale of the cuts, is announced in parliament.
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Can we Brits even do satire anymore?
Can we Brits even do satire anymore?
It starts as all the others do; the clouds part, followed by the sound of harps and then the voice which utters the words “the Simpsons” in a melodic, familiar way. The opening credits for The Simpsons are the most famous in television history, and even with the latest makeover of the subtitles (now complete with animation suitable for the high definition age) there is still a sense of familiarity and gentle humour about them – the appetiser which settles you in to the meal.
The opening credit sequence of the Simpsons episode to be broadcast in the UK on the 21st October is not quite in the same vein. The regular “couch gag” is a minute long exposition on the conditions of a Simpson’s animation sweatshop in South Korea; the conditions are suitably bleak. There then follows cats/rabbits (it’s difficult to tell) being shredded to make the stuffing for Bart Simpson dolls, a dolphin head as a tape gadget and a unicorn, whose horn makes the holes for all those Simpsons DVD’s we begin to purchase around this time of year, on its last legs.
The storyboard for this gag comes from Banksy, the guerrilla graffiti artist extraordinaire now turned satirist, railing against the Fox Machine. It hasn’t worked. The gag in the first place is woefully misinformed.
South Korea, where the Simpsons cartoons are made, is the 13th most industrially developed country in the world. 83% of school leavers go on to university, a figure which puts our 45% to shame. South Korea also has high speed fibre optic broadband in every primary and secondary school in the country. The whiteboard, in schools in the UK, is seen as a technological advancement to behold. So South Korea is not the right choice of country for a polemic against “the man” and being an animator is not comparable to working in a sweat shop – who’d have thought it. Banksy got it seriously wrong on this and should just stick to art he knows best.
The art of satire: ridiculing figures who put themselves about as worthy of being followed, use to be something that the British were famed for. Now satire from the UK is reduced to misguided cartoons and Mock The Week, a truly poor show full to the brim with sell–out comedians who make jokes about the Queens vagina and pass it off as being clever and edgy. I am of the generation that is just about old enough to remember Spitting Image. A show which highlighted to the viewer on the outside of the Westminster bubble just how crazy that world was. The show was OTT, but only in so far as it helped tell the joke. For example, who doesn't think of John Major as being grey?
To this young twentysomething that now seems like a golden age in British satire compared to what we have now. If one thinks of satire now the names that come up are all on the other side of the Atlantic. Tina Fey captured the Zeitgeist in America with her take on Sarah Palin. Jon Stewart’s parody of Glenn Beck’s ‘out there’ conspiracy theories is the latest in his long line of classic sketches. While Stephen Colbert, my personal favourite of the American satirist, week in week out ridicules the ridiculous reporting of mainstream media through his outlandish (yet familiar) newsreader character (who is apparently based on Bill O’ Reilly).
The Americans understand what we once used to: that satire has to be based in truth. “You can see Russia from my house” is a reserved yet hilarious statement for Tina Fey to make, and it is all the more hilarious because Palin thought (and maybe still thinks) that this qualified herself to be in The White House. That and the fact the she thinks Africa is a country.
The ridicule of Brown and Cameron and Clegg, and soon enough Miliband on our TV screens will all be about getting the physical appearance and mannerisms just right. This is at the expense of capturing the banality of what it is our politicians say to us. I admire Bremner, but impersonation isn’t satire.Spitting Image brought forth a whole generation of young satirist, but now it seems that the only satire which sticks to the golden rule, that there is humour in truth, is The Thick Of It.
Satire, more than most genres needs time to bed in and find itself. Season 3 of The Thick Of It and the film In The Loop were the funniest offerings in the franchise. It is a genre which also needs to be organic. Studio audiences are fine, the constant interruption of an egomaniacal host isn’t. Formulaic quiz shows seem to have captured the true art and bottled it, ready for distribution in easy manageable chunks which can be repeated again and again on Dave. Bring back Spitting Image! Or alternatively, make ‘Private Eye: the TV show.’
Pictures of the Week
This week's photographs come from the city of Chengde and its magnificent municipal gardens. photos taken by Suswati Basu.
Playlist of the week
This week really brought it home. Summer is indeed over. As always it never last long enough. This playlist is a real close your eyes and sit in front of window playlist. From the slow disco of Trophy Wife, whose single Microlite is out next month on Moshi Moshi, to the Californian hipster sound of The Drums; there's a tinge of coolness running through it. The music isn't sweltering, but then neither are our summers. Apologies for the lack of auto play, I'm hoping to resolve the issue.
Video of the week
Because I could not get the Foals 'this orient' on the playlist, this week there are two videos. The second video being the promo that Michael J. Fox made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the iconic film Back To The Future. That's it for this week. Have a nice weekend, and hopefully see you again next week.
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